Current management solutions for managing joint use utilities are centrally based systems and databases typically maintained by one or more power companies that own utility poles in a given area. Typically, joint use utility poles are used by multiple users in addition to the power companies. As such, a joint use agreement is normally formed between the power company and each of the users of the joint use utility poles. Members of the joint use agreement include entities that utilize the joint use utility poles to attach their own lines and equipment to the joint use utility poles, such as cable and telecommunication service providers.
Oftentimes, due to exposure to weather, environmental factors, physical damage, or vandalism, the utility poles periodically need to be replaced by the power companies. In these situations, members of the joint use agreement must each also transfer their own equipment and lines to the new utility pole. This process may be referred to as a pole transfer (PT). Other times, existing equipment may merely need to be temporarily removed or replaced by the by the members of the joint use agreement.
Typically, when work needs to be completed on a joint use utility pole, the owner of the utility pole (i.e. the power company) opens a PT ticket or other work ticket identifying details of the job to be completed. The PT ticket may identify the joint use agreement members associated with the utility pole, global positioning system (GPS) coordinates indicating the location of the utility pole, one or more steps needed to complete the job on the utility pole, the type of work that needs to be completed at each step, the order in which the work must be completed, the joint use agreement member to complete each step, and the next joint use agreement member needing to complete a step in the work ticket.
When a work ticket is created by the owner of the utility pole, members of the joint use agreement must retrieve all tickets to with which they are associated with in a batch process from the management system. Furthermore, joint use agreement members must login to the system each time they wish to access updated information regarding their tickets. Similarly, for a join use agreement member to update a ticket to reflect the work they have completed for a ticket, the joint use agreement member must login to the system and update the ticket through the database manually. Accordingly, each time an update has been made to a ticket, a new batch of tickets must be retrieved by each joint use agreement member to reflect the most recent changes made to each of their respective tickets. Moreover, as only GPS coordinates are provided in each ticket corresponding to the location of the utility pole of the respective ticket, generally a field technician must manually determine the location of each utility pole, and the routes between utility poles when working on open tickets.
Under the current framework, multiple inefficiencies and redundancies are present regarding the management of work tickets, communications from field technicians, data retrieval and entry to the system, and route planning. Thus, a more efficient system for managing joint use utility communications, data retrieval, data entry, and route planning is presented by the embodiments below.